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CA politician seeks to end shackling of inmates in labor

Healthcare Security Weekly, August 1, 2005

California assemblyman Sally Lieber has proposed a bill that would make it illegal to shackle female prisoners to their beds while giving birth, reports the San Jose Mercury News.

From 1998 to 2004, more than 1,300 incarcerated California women gave birth in hospitals while correction officers kept them shackled to the bed by their ankle.

Lieber says the practice is inhumane and unnecessary because the act of labor is so strenuous that inmates provide little threat of escape at that time.

"When we have individuals who are incarcerated, we have a duty to provide minimum standards of healthcare," Lieber told the Mercury News, "particularly when there is a newborn involved."

Officers typically removed the shackles during the "pushing stage" but the bill proposes that women be unrestrained once active labor sets in.

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